How is it that West Berlin was in the Russian Part of Germany? Did the Russians give up that part of the...?

Question

Did the Russians give up that part of the country after the berlin airlift? I mean what did that mean? When you left West Berlin you still weren't in free lands? WHERE WAS THE WALL through the city or through wherever the Russian part of Germany ended? Be specific. Be long. Person who answers the most of the above questions gets it.

Answer 1

1.How is it that West Berlin was in the Russian Part of Germany?

The Division of Germany and Berlin into 2 parts was a result of the Yalta Conference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Confe...

Directly after the war Germany was split into 4 sectors, each one administered by one partner of the Allied Forces. There was a French sector, an American Sector, a British Sector and a Russian sector. The borders of these sectors were pre-agreed on, thus a town may have been first conquered by the Brits or the Americans but got later turned over to the Russians.  As the capital Berlin got split into 4 sectors too.

What became West-Berlin were the combined American, French and British sectors of Berlin. They were an island in the sector occupied by the Soviets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Occu...

2. Did the Russians give up that part of the country after the berlin airlift?

No, the Russians never had it. That was the whole point of the airlift.

The Russians wanted all of Berlin, so they closed all roads, shipping lines and rail tracks into West-Berlin to force the issue.

The American government refuse to give in to the Russians (this was the Cold War already) and they started the airlift to keep the inhabitants of West-Berlin from starving.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Bloc...

3. When you left West Berlin you still weren't in free lands?

When you left West Berlin by car or train you had to go through the territory of the GDR. There were three official  corridors that people could use to travel, either by car, train or or plane. If you went by car you had to use a certain road (autobahn) inside one of these corridors of travel and were not allowed to stop until you reached the border to West Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Berli...

The roads where roughly under the air corridors. Today they are the A2, the A9 and another autobahn, the A 24 I think.

4. WHERE WAS THE WALL through the city or through wherever the Russian part of Germany ended?

Essentially there where 2 walls - one wall encirling West-Berlin (Berlin Wall) and another wall (the Iron Curtain) between West Germany and East Germany.

You can find a map of the former GDR (East Germany) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDR

More info on the inner German border:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Germa...

And here is a map of Berlin's districts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Berli...

And a map how Berlin was divided:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Occup...

You can roughly see how the districts match up. Note that today's administrative district Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain was 2 districts then. Kreuzberg was in the west, Friedrichshain in the east.

And here is a map of the Berlin Wall and the crossing points:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Karte...

Since foreigners were only allowed to cross through at Checkpoint Charlie it is easy to understand how that spot became so famous.

That you have trouble finding traces of the Berlin Wall in today's Berlin only shows how tragic and unnatural the division was. Before the wall Berlin was one city, and did not take long for it to become one city again.

The most curious point was probably the train station Friedrichstrasse. There people of West Berlin and East Berlin were seperated by no more than a comperatively thin wall. The border ran right through the tracks. It was the termination point for the S-Bahn in East Berlin as well as West Berlin. At one end of the tracks was West Berlin, on the other East. Also the U-Bahn (Underground) U6 from West Berlin passed East German territory here. When you rode the U-Bahn you could see ghost stations - stations built before the war but now in East German territory and heavily guarded by East German security. The trains had to pass them bc this iwas how the tracks ran - through East Berlin. But when reunification came it took them only a few days to open up all the walled up entrances.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Berlin...

Answer 2

When the war ended they divided Germany into four zones and did the same with Berlin. As time passed France, US and Brits all joined their territories which formed West Germany and they did the same with Berlin.

The treaties made by all sides dictated that the capital Berlin be divided four ways as well. So this did cause problems for sure esp during the air lift we sent to feed them when Russia closed the roads to Berlin.

They did not have to give it up it was part of the treaty, actually some areas were given too the Russians from the USA and others due to that treaty. Such as in Weimar, it was liberated by Americans but Russians took it over later.

The Wall was in Berlin separating east and west Berlin. It was only in the city of Berlin.

Special permits and such were given so you could drive to west Berlin from the rest of West Germany as well as fly in. The one time they tried to stop it we used air lifts to feed the West Berling people.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

After WWII Berlin AND Germany was divided into four

sectors, which the 4 Allies got. Since Berlin was in the

Russian Sector of Germany there was West German

land in there.

Using the Airlift the Russians tried and make the other

Allies give W.Berlin up by blocking all the road, rail and

canal links but the Allies felt that giving W.B up would

give the wrong signal and they were also scared of a

domino effect (First W.Berlin, then W.Germany and so

on). So, they flew in resources and eventually Russia

gave up.

The Wall through the city went about right through the

middle, I can't draw it on here but I'll give you a link

later on. The wall through Germany went along the

western borders of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,

over Brandenburg and until Bavaria, where it stopped.

That was East Germany and inside there, completely

surrounded by a wall (about 40 km long I believe) lay

W.Berlin.

W.B wasn't Russian at any time so, No, they didn't

give it up, they just gave up trying to occupy it.

By the way: When you went out of W.B you were in the

GDR (obviously), and as you said, not free land. Because

my grandparents lived in W.B (and still do, along with me)

they know how it was and told me some stuff. For example:

If you stopped your car anywhere in the GDR (as in, for a pee

or cos your car was broken) all these spies would come

out of the forest lining the Autobahn and possibly arrest

you cos they were obviously scared you were letting in

East Germans and smuggling them over the border. And I

think that later on you couldn't even drive through the GDR

anymore, you had to take the plane but I'm not sure. I

have to ask my grandparents.

By the way: The same (the dividing after WWII) happened

to Austria and Vienna, only that Russia gave up their parts

their sometime later (about 1950 I think). So therefore, and

because the GDR built this huge wall (Did you know they

wanted to make it even larger in 2000? Only that their country

collapsed in 1989, they didn't get a chance to. =]) Berlin

became this symbol for the Cold War and freedom.

Is that enough? =)

Answer 4

West Berlin was handed over to the western allies in exchange for parts of Eastern Germany shortly after the war was over. Berlin was divided in four sectors: the Wall separated the western sectors ( French, British, American) from the Soviet sector and East Germany. The allied offcially ruled Berlin till 1990.

Answer 5

The best way to think of it is like this.  Germany was divided into 2 parts - E & W.  East was the "russian" part.  Berlin was within the eastern sector, so the russian part.  Berlin, however, because it was teh capital, was divided among the allies - Americans, British, French.  So in Berlin, there were 4 sectors - American, British, French & Russian.  When the wall was built, it separated teh russian sector from the other 3 sectors (the "West").  The wall actually enclosed the West.  Think of it like an island.  West Berlin was within the whole eastern part of Germany - like an island.  If you traveled outside of West Berlin, you were in the East.

Hope that helps!

Answer 6

I posted a really long answer some hours ago, but just when I was about to post it, Yahoo gave me a 999, and the text got discarded. Drat!

I'll try to repeat what I wrote in a shortened version anyway.

Germany was divided into four parts. The one was what is known as "east Germany", or the former GDR. Hitler's capital, Berlin, also got divided into four parts. The original plan was that each occupying country (Britain, France, the USA and Russia) should govern their occupational zones from their own district in Berlin.

Now a split-up between the Western allies and Russia was foreseeable, and the Western allies would never have given up Berlin. After WWII, the world entered from a hot war into what is now known as the "cold war". -- Maybe Hiroshima was a turning point in history, as some people say, and sure there were Germans involved in the invention of the atomic bomb. Einstein, von Braun, Oppenheimer, to name a few. But they didn't drop it, and after all, that's not the topic to discuss here.

Whatever the reasons were, Berlin became politico. Nobody would have drawn back. West Berlin is mostly remembered for the US forces there, the "Luftbrücke" and the "raisin bombers", and I'm sure German people there appreciated American help in those hard days. If you ever come to Berlin, go see the museum at "checkpoint Charlie" at Friedrichstraße. If you walk a few meters further, there are copper nails in the pavement where the border used to be, and you can see remnants of the wall and east Berlin watchtowers in some places. They're all museums or national monuments now; most of the wall has been torn down, and that's the only reasonable thing they could have done.

Just to give you an impression what it meant to be west-German and drive to Berlin when the whole lot of now federal states were socialist: You had to undergo a thorough check at the border, then you got your permit, and you were not allowed to leave a thing they called "Autobahn" until you reached Berlin. You were not even allowed to stop for a pee, and if you did in a parking lot, there were always strange people in strange clothing around who watched you, and I swear they were police.

I had a friend in 1990 who made her way out of the GDR via Hungary and Austria, because two years before, nobody would have guessed that the wall would ever come down, so she did it that way. I took her back home to Leipzig in my car when the borders were open, and her four year old son saw a car with flashing blue lights (police) when we crossed a bridge entering the Autobahn, and he said to her:

"Mama, wen holen die ab?" ("Mom, whom are they fetching?")

I knew she and some of her friends had been on a Stasi watchlist, but you'd never expect a four-year-old whose last GDR experience must have been at least a year ago to ask such a question. He did it in all innocence a child can have, but it made me shiver, and I pulled over into the next parking lot, left the car, and cried. And I'm not ashamed of it.

Answer 7

Do you want to kidding us?

Read a history book or look on a map!

Berlin was like an island in the former GDR. Berlin was surrounded by the wall.

Got it???